Stereophonically Delicious

Lingering Sin and the Temple of Doom

Sandy works at a school, so he was off all of this week. I took the opportunity to take some days off from work and get in some marathon editing sessions for The Early Mixes. As it stands, the bulk of the film is assembled, and it is coming together pretty much exactly as I expected it to. Yes, I designed the film and shot it to cut it the way that I have, but it is still nice to see footage that was shot months apart smoothly work together in a scene.

I'm working on the soundtrack as I go, trying to keep the aural environment clean and consistent. A well-designed audio track is really what turns assembled footage into a scene. I can't express how useful my mix-making hobby has been in this process; I have learned so much about aural masking, stereo imaging and sound editing that I have been applying to this sound mix. One of my main advantages is that all of the dialogue was recorded well, so there was no need to attempt any post-dubbing, which I am not particularly fond of; I prefer the immediacy of the original performance.

The Vulcans of Valinor

I am also in the home stretch with the Lord of the Rings compilation. There were times in the past when I felt close, but at this point there are literally minuscule tweaks I have to make on the masters, but once those are finished, the mix itself will be complete. This was without a doubt the single most involved mix project I've ever worked on. When I made Love and War, my North and South mix, I sat with a notebook and jotted down notable cues whilst watching both mini-series. That was nothing compared to this process, which involved watching the movies and listening to the albums and Complete Recordings multiple times, poring over Doug Adams' book, reading Tolkien's novel all the way through again, teaching this computer how to behave properly and that's all on top of the massive work I had to do to conform the music to my structure for the album.

Digital Wonderland

The biggest problem people like myself have with downloaded music is the sound quality. It seems, however, that this may be addressed soon. If iTunes starts offering files in a format offering sound superior to the CD, it will no doubt lead the way and may at long last be the technological advance that might turn the tide against the sonic indifference so many have toward their music. Not that it would make people care more, but at least the standard will be higher than that for this previous decade. A whole generation of kids have grown up listening to music that has been compressed both in terms of information and dynamic as well; they have no idea what music is supposed to sound like. iTunes improved their sound once before, upgrading from an anemic 128 kb/s AAC to a much superior 256 kb/s, but that still wasn't an improvement over what had come before. I don't think it will improve the problems of the music industry, but a better sonic standard is something to be welcomed.

Farewell, Danilo

I hope you understand that my merciless ragging on you was all in fun.

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Cat, uh, Tonic

Varinia is a delight to have around, but one of the things that is most endearing about her is that she has the beauty but lacks some of the grace. Or, to put it more bluntly, she's something of a klutz. She is always knocking things over. She will also stretch out on the couch or bed right near the edge and fall off. Last night she tried to leap from the chair onto the table, snagged her paw on her own little bed thing that was on the table and ended up falling back into the chair she was leaping from. It's very cute.

I was sick last week, which sucked but was a lot less boring with her around!